This is a follow up to my other post on the referendum from a few days ago: https://lemmy.world/post/46542512
Again… translated using (mostly) machine translation
Berlin not car-free for the foreseeable future, referendum doesn’t get green light
In Berlin there will be no referendum on largely making the city car-free. The plan of lawyers, traffic experts and green activists didn’t make it due to lack of support. The initiators announced that only 140,000 of the required 175,000 signatures had been collected.
They wanted to significantly limit car traffic in the German capital within the ring railway, an area where about 30 percent of the nearly 4 million Berliners live. With 88 square kilometers, the area is about the size of Eindhoven.
Residents would be allowed to drive a car in this area for twelve days a year. There would also be exceptions; for emergency services, taxis, people with disabilities, freight traffic and people with crucial professions. The rest would be dependent on the public transport, the bicycle or has to walk.
The plan had to deal with resistance from the start, right-wing parties have been actively campaigning against it recently. For example, opponents pointed to a higher traffic burden in surrounding neighborhoods and economic damage, because companies would leave and shops would become less accessible.
It’s a bummer that this proposal won’t go to see a real vote. Maybe it was just too big of a pill to swallow.
Have there been talks about congestion charges instead? That would be a lower bar, would reduce congestion and emissions, and has implementations in other cities to compare with.
I expect that to see about the same pushback. Berlin can’t even build bike lanes without severe pushback.
